


Choi San the Friendly Ghost

by arabmorgan



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Developing Relationship, Fairy Tale Elements, M/M, Magical Realism, Some Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:53:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26772469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arabmorgan/pseuds/arabmorgan
Summary: Hongjoong accidentally moves into a haunted apartment. Thankfully, it turns out to be a less horrible experience than he might have expected.
Relationships: Choi San/Kim Hongjoong
Comments: 14
Kudos: 95
Collections: RARETEEZ





	Choi San the Friendly Ghost

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [AteezRarePairFest2020](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/AteezRarePairFest2020) collection. 



Hongjoong had been waiting for this moment for ages. The day he finally moved out of his cramped university dorm room and into his very own, equally cramped apartment.

He loved Seonghwa, he really did, but by God, his best friend was absolutely impossible to live with. Some part of Hongjoong was frankly amazed that their friendship had managed to survive the three years they’d been forced to coexist in the same living space. It was one thing if Seonghwa liked to clean, but it was quite another for him to continually nag Hongjoong to do the exact same thing.

For one thing, Hongjoong wasn’t even home often enough to contribute to whatever mess Seonghwa was always going on about. He’d had enough of whining at Seonghwa in protest, and he was pretty sure that Seonghwa had also had enough of being whined at by Hongjoong.

“Just wait, you’ll come crawling back once you get tired of living in a pigsty,” Seonghwa had scoffed that morning, with a crooked smile on his face as he watched Hongjoong totter off down the corridor with a stack of boxes in his arms.

“Don’t cry when you start to miss me,” Hongjoong called back over his shoulder, teeth flashing in a cheerful smirk.

The thing was, Hongjoong was a realist. He wasn’t expecting perfection from his new home. In fact, he was prepared for many things – for inconsiderate neighbours, for wonky heating in winter, for pests in the kitchen cupboards – but he was perfectly ready to deal with it in a mature manner as long as it meant some blessed privacy.

What he wasn’t prepared for, however, was the damn ghost haunting his apartment that wouldn’t leave him the hell alone.

* * *

Choi San was one of _those_ types of ghosts. The annoying ones that walked around and conversed casually with people like they weren’t set to 70% opacity and partially see-through. Not that Hongjoong had ever encountered any other ghosts – he hadn’t even believed in ghosts before meeting San – but he would have preferred to be haunted by someone who didn’t lounge around openly in _his_ home, on _his_ couch, while constantly trying to make conversation with him.

That was, in fact, exactly how Hongjoong had been introduced to his new housemate, and he had almost screamed bloody murder at the sight of a complete stranger in his new apartment.

Only the fact that the young man lying on his worn, second-hand sofa looked just as startled as Hongjoong felt made him pause with his mouth half-open, both of them frozen in some sort of terrified staring contest for a full ten seconds.

Finally, the intruder said, in a completely inane tone of amazement, “You can see me?”

His dark hair hung messily in his eyes, soft strands of wavy brown save for a wide streak of white above his left eye, giving Hongjoong the bizarre impression that he had stepped right out of a comic book.

“Yes?” he replied, too confused to say anything else, and that was pretty much how he got himself stuck with Choi San.

Unfortunately for him, San was a bit of a chatterbox, and Hongjoong distinctly remembered moving out of his dorm room so that he could live _alone_. “I don’t usually go on so much,” San assured him, as if he could read Hongjoong’s mind. “It’s just been a really long time since I’ve had anyone to talk to.” He beamed, eyes curving into sweet-looking crescents as he brushed past Hongjoong to peek at his belongings, strewn messily about on the floor. It was an odd sensation, wispy and barely there, just the faintest whisper of a phantom touch. It felt almost like a gentle breeze if Hongjoong didn’t think about it too much.

Things were tolerable at first, but only barely. Hongjoong did his best to force all his worldly possessions into some semblance of order despite the constant distraction by his side, because he didn’t have the first clue what to do upon finding a ghost living uninvited in his home. He certainly didn’t want to accidentally piss San off and end up with a vengeful poltergeist on his hands.

But then San said, so eagerly that Hongjoong felt dread crawl down his spine, “So the thing is, I’ve been cursed and I need your help. You see, my body –”

And that was precisely when Hongjoong decided that he had had enough. He hadn’t asked for any of this, whatever _this_ was. San seemed like a perfectly nice ghost, but if his dead and decaying corpse was anywhere in the vicinity, it was a vicinity Hongjoong did not want to be in.

“I’m sorry, I have to go,” he cried, and he tossed the clothes in his arms to the ground before making a beeline right for the front door. “Goodbye!”

Slamming the door shut, he stood there motionless for a full minute, poised to flee if he saw even a hint of San’s body parts emerging through the solid wood, but it seemed that the ghost couldn’t leave the apartment after all. It was also then that Hongjoong realised he was standing outside his apartment with nothing but the clothes on his back and his phone in his pocket.

If anyone was cursed here, it was definitely Hongjoong and not San.

_Lunch?_ He sent the message off to Yunho, who seemed the most likely to agree to treat him to a meal without making fun of him the entire time. Yunho responded quickly with a multitude of happy emojis, and Hongjoong smiled, determined not to think about anything remotely supernatural for the rest of the day.

* * *

Things took a while to settle down after that unfortunate first meeting.

“Look, my body –” San would try each time he saw Hongjoong, or, “It really won’t take long,” or even the dreaded, “It’s not far, I promise,” which Hongjoong very much did not want to hear about.

After quite literally running Hongjoong out of the apartment another half dozen times, San finally seemed to realise that he was fighting a losing battle, and he spent a few days sulking translucently on the couch before his sunny disposition got the better of him once more.

“Have you even eaten anything today?” he would demand as Hongjoong squinted at his screen, deaf to the world around him with his headphones over his ears.

“You spend too much time at the studio,” he would complain, the umpteenth time Hongjoong unlocked the apartment door at two in the morning with drooping eyelids and sagging shoulders.

“If you don’t respond, your friends are going to think you’re dead,” he would say, with a loud huff of disapproval as yet another ignored notification flashed on Hongjoong’s phone, the soft _ding!_ going unheard over the sound of the miniature keyboard.

It was almost like living with Seonghwa all over again, except San wasn’t such a stickler for cleanliness, couldn’t actually physically manhandle him into submission, and was actually kind of – dare he say it – _cute_. After being threatened on a daily basis by an unfairly tall and intimidating Seonghwa, San’s gentler manner of cajoling was a breath of fresh air, even if he did pout childishly a tad too often for for Hongjoong’s liking.

He was sweet, really. Everything about San just screamed niceness, from the way he fretted needlessly over Hongjoong’s eating habits, to his insistent reminders whenever Hongjoong got so absorbed in his work that he was liable to be late for class.

Hongjoong was increasingly starting to wonder who in the world would have cursed someone as outrageously likable as Choi San.

He was simply so easy to please, it almost made Hongjoong feel bad.

“You’re back early today!” San peeked out through the wall at the sound of the front door clicking shut, the rest of him sliding into view as he bounded forward, a sight that Hongjoong was thoroughly immune to by then. San’s dimples were flashing in full view as he drifted along beside Hongjoong, watching him set his takeaway dinner on the table with bright-eyed fascination.

Hongjoong flashed him an awkward smile as he snapped his wooden chopsticks apart. “I made good progress at the studio today, so I figured I might as well come back and get an early night,” he muttered, and San beamed even wider at that, letting out a small noise of approval that made Hongjoong duck his head in embarrassment.

The truth was that he enjoyed spending time with San. He liked the way San’s entire being would light up with interest whenever Hongjoong talked about his classes, or his meals with Yeosang and Wooyoung, or the current difficulties he was having with his lyrics. He liked listening to San’s domestic little tales of the pigeons that stopped to perch on the kitchen windowsill, squawking with offence whenever he poked their plump bodies with a ghostly finger.

Seonghwa had been an alright roommate, but San made him want to come home.

He let San pick a random movie off Netflix to watch while Hongjoong ate, and if he spent more time staring at the way the light of the screen flickered blurrily through San’s body rather than the movie itself – well, he had never been a huge fan of romcoms anyway.

“Goodnight,” Hongjoong said later, almost uncomfortable with the deliberateness of the greeting, but San only smiled up at him, his face softening with open happiness. He was still curled against the side of the couch, legs tucked up beneath him, and Hongjoong felt a sudden urge to just – _touch_. Perhaps something innocuous like a pat on the shoulder, but even that felt suddenly like too much, and he retreated to his room without another word.

He didn’t even know if he could actually touch San anyway. San was still a ghost after all.

* * *

Hongjoong’s life gradually went to pieces as the semester advanced, the way it did every year. He had assignments piled atop assignments, and finals that suddenly seemed much nearer than he had originally thought they were. He couldn’t quite seem to put down his personal music work either, a trait that Seonghwa had already spent the past three years lamenting.

“It’s called prioritising, Hongjoong.” His best friend’s voice came through tinnily over the speaker, exasperation lacing his tone clear as day despite the slight echo of the transmission. “If even Mingi can put his personal projects aside to prepare for finals, there’s no reason you can’t too. Kim Hongjoong, are you listening to me?”

Hongjoong made sure to sigh as loudly as possible. “Yes,” he grumbled. “I’ve got it. I’ll rest or something.”

“He’s right, you know,” San said the moment the connection ended. He was perched on the edge of Hongjoong’s bed, barely making an indent in the sheets as he swung his legs back and forth, watching Hongjoong struggle through yet another essay on musical theory.

“Not you too,” Hongjoong sighed, and San jutted his bottom lip out in a pout.

“I had to tell you that your keys were in the bathroom yesterday,” San informed him helpfully, “and you would’ve missed two classes this week if I hadn’t reminded you of them.” Standing, San padded over to Hongjoong’s side and patted his head lightly, attempting to smooth down the unruly tufts of bleached silver hair that were still sticking up in every direction. His hand trailed down to the back of Hongjoong’s neck and rested there, a cool ticklish sensation that made him scrunch his neck down into his shoulders.

Hongjoong reached back to take hold of San’s wrist, but as always he was met with nothing but air.

“I’ll be sure to credit you if I ever get this degree,” he said dryly, and San laughed, a high-pitched, almost hysterical sound that had surprised Hongjoong the first time it had burst out of him. His dimples formed long slashes along the sides of his cheeks, his eyes narrowing into half-moons of amusement, and Hongjoong quite suddenly realised how it was possible to fill an entire album with songs about a single person.

“Do you still need my help?” he asked abruptly, and San blinked at him, startled. “I mean, with your body. The curse.”

It was funny when he thought about it, in an ironic sort of way. He should have wanted to help San more when he hadn’t cared, because then he might at least have gotten the pesky ghost out of his hair. Now Hongjoong did care, and he would actually be sad to see San go after he had been freed from whatever nonsense curse he was under.

But that was what caring was about, he supposed – wanting the best for someone else regardless of how it made him feel.

San’s mouth had slowly dropped open, his eyes comically wide as he gaped at Hongjoong. “Really?” he said, his expression painfully hopeful.

Hongjoong swung around in his chair to fix his full attention on San, deciding that his essay was pretty much a lost cause by then, at least for the day.

“Yeah,” he said, tilting his head as he studied San’s now-familiar features, from the sharp angles of his jaw to the prominent jut of his cheekbones. Much the same as Seonghwa, San had an intensely intimidating face, a fact that Hongjoong found amusing considering they were two of the warmest people he knew. On the other hand, Yeosang had the face of an angel and definitely didn’t deserve it.

Looking unaccountably nervous, San sucked in a deep breath and clasped his hands together. “Okay, so about this curse,” he said with a strained smile, and this time Hongjoong didn’t stop him.

* * *

In the end, it turned out that San hadn’t stepped out of a comic book after all. He had stepped out of a damn fairy tale. Honestly, Hongjoong should have guessed as much the moment a curse had been brought up.

“So let me get this straight. A witch – an actual _witch_ – got upset that she wasn’t invited to your grand birthday party and she punished your parents by placing a curse on you?” Hongjoong said slowly, rubbing exhaustedly across his forehead with one hand. “And you’re not actually…dead.”

San pursed his lips in thought for a moment before nodding. “Yeah, that’s pretty much it,” he agreed cheerfully. “I mean, I don’t _think_ I’m dead, but seeing as I haven’t seen my body in a hundred years I can’t say for certain. You remember how the curse went, right?”

“ _For your folly the price you shall pay,  
To see your child in slumber lay.  
Restless wanderer a century old,  
Until with love a kiss bestowed._”

Hongjoong groaned when San repeated the ridiculous-sounding spell, feeling the exact same disbelief that had seized him when he’d first realised there was a ghost in his apartment. “Who curses someone in verse?” he muttered irritably under his breath. It wasn’t even a particularly good rhyme at that.

San only cocked his head, clearly puzzled by Hongjoong’s annoyance. “But all witches cast spells in verse,” he said, as if it were common knowledge.

“Anyway,” he continued, waving his hand dismissively, “I turned twenty-one and I guess I fell asleep – because slumber, right? I don’t really know exactly what happened after that, because when I finally woke up I was just stuck in this apartment. I’ve been here the past ten, fifteen years maybe? And no one’s ever been able to see me till you came along, which means that _you’re_ going to be the one to find my body and wake me up.”

Hongjoong blinked, slightly taken aback by the bright intensity of San’s gaze on his face. “Okay,” he said hesitantly, half-afraid to raise San’s hopes too high. “So where’s your body?”

The ghost looked suddenly sheepish, his gaze darting suspiciously to the side as he chewed on his top lip for a moment. “Well, I’m not completely sure, but I think there’s a hidden room behind your closet,” he admitted. His voice was lowered but with an audible flourish to it, as if he were sharing some great, earth-shattering secret instead of telling Hongjoong that he would basically need to hack through the back of his wardrobe to find not Narnia but a possibly rotting body.

“You’re kidding,” Hongjoong said flatly as the realisation sank in. “I’m going to have to smash holes in my walls just to retrieve your corpse that may not even be there?” The thought alone was so macabre it was ridiculous, although now that he was taking a better look around, it _was_ a little odd that his bedroom was so small considering the length of his living room. Equally odd was the fact that he hadn’t noticed the size discrepancy before this very moment.

_Magic_ , a tiny, traitorous part of his brain whispered.

Hongjoong looked over at San, who was still staring at him like Hongjoong held all the answers in the world at his fingertips, like he was more than just a struggling, overworked university student who was barely keeping afloat on his own. San had seen Hongjoong fall asleep beside his breakfast; he had seen Hongjoong slip with a complete lack of grace on a shirt he had tossed on the floor and almost brain himself against the cabinet; and still San believed that Hongjoong was actually competent enough to help him.

He breathed out a loud sigh.

“Alright,” he said, defeated. “Let’s do it. Once my finals are over, let’s dig your body out and wake you up.”

The smile of relief that spread across San’s face almost made the dread worth it. Almost.

* * *

Despite the looming threat of his exams drawing closer, the matter of San’s body rarely left Hongjoong’s mind over the coming weeks.

He thought about it when Seonghwa and Yunho came over for a study session, and San remained stubbornly and uncontrollably invisible to anyone other than himself. He thought about it when he happened to catch San looking wistfully out of the window, the sunlight washing his profile gold and lighting the floating dust motes behind him. He thought about it every time San touched him, whether it was the barely-there pressure of a snuggly hug or the cool trail of fingertips along his skin.

“What’s the first thing you want to do once you get your body back?” he wondered out loud, one of those late-night thoughts as he blinked out at his shadowed room, fighting the heaviness of his eyelids.

“Hmm?” San, nothing more than a faint shimmer by the foot of Hongjoong’s bed, sounded vaguely surprised. “I’d just want to…take a walk, I guess. I want to feel the wind on my skin and the leaves underfoot – oh, and I’d want to taste something too, and maybe hold someone’s hand. It’d be nice to feel warmth.”

He sounded subdued, but it was the instinctive quiet that came with conversations held in darkened rooms, and Hongjoong could still clearly hear the joyful anticipation that laced San’s words. It terrified him, the idea of disappointing San and destroying the delight that came so easily to him, and Hongjoong certainly had no intention of doing so, even if it did mean hacking a hole into his wall.

“That sounds nice,” he murmured. “Let’s do that then. We’ll do it all first thing.”

San laughed, and his voice sounded suddenly nearer to Hongjoong’s face than before. “Go to sleep, Hongjoong,” he said chidingly. “According to the study schedule Yeosang drew up for you, you’re supposed to be up at eight tomorrow.”

Hongjoong groaned at the reminder and pressed his face into his pillow as if he could suffocate himself through sheer willpower alone. He could feel San’s fingers stroking along the prickly hairs at the nape of his neck, like a bug was crawling on him, and he shivered before turning back over to face the ceiling.

“I wish I could touch you,” he sighed, swiping his hand right through the blurry outline of San’s body. “I wish you didn’t have to be so lonely.”

“I’m not lonely. I have you,” San said teasingly, laying his head on the pillow beside Hongjoong. “I’m glad you were the one who could see me.”

Hongjoong only smiled slightly and didn’t reply, but he was glad too.

* * *

Hongjoong didn’t know what it meant that it took him less than half an hour to smash a hole in his wall that was large enough to clamber through. Maybe that he needed to be more careful when carrying heavy objects in his home, because one wrong move and he might accidentally blow a piece of drywall right into the neighbouring apartment.

San followed after him, sticking his head through the jagged hole with uncharacteristic hesitation on his face. “I could never pass through this wall. The magic always kept me out,” he said wonderingly to himself, running his fingers along the wall between the hidden room and Hongjoong’s living room.

The hidden room itself was comfortably lit by an unknown radiance, and surprisingly not ominously filled with dust or cobwebs. Hongjoong’s eyes were immediately drawn to the bed that sat right in the middle of it, taking up most of the available space. On it, laying like a fairy tale prince in slumber on creamy satin sheets, his hair a dark halo about his head, was a motionless body with a very familiar face.

It felt surreal, to see a San that was so completely solid and undeniably real right before his eyes. For once, Hongjoong couldn’t see the pillow beneath his head or the silky shine of the sheets through his body. Slowly, without really thinking about it, he lifted his hand, fingers hovering a hairsbreadth from San’s lips, wanting to touch but hardly daring to. The warm, steady exhalations of San’s breaths flickered against his skin, and Hongjoong let out a shuddering breath of disbelief.

“You’re here. You’re real,” he whispered, a sudden surge of tenderness coursing through him as the thought of everything San had gone through over the years hit him anew. He turned to San’s ghost, hovering some distance away with anxiety sparking in his eyes as his gaze darted from his body to Hongjoong.

“Hongjoong?” San said uncertainly, and Hongjoong crooked a small smile at him.

“Let’s wake you up, huh,” he said, looking back down and placing a hand softly against San’s cheek, marvelling at the feel of smooth skin beneath his palm. He stared at San’s face for a moment, at the delicate sweep of his lashes and the shadows of his cheekbones, and had to take a minute to recall the final line of the witch’s curse.

_Until with love a kiss bestowed._

Right, he could do that. He could totally kiss a body that had apparently been magically preserved for a hundred years. It wasn’t weird or anything that he was going to kiss San and that San was, presumably, going to wake up for some inexplicable reason because of that kiss.

Witches were so _odd_. Hongjoong had definitely been relieved to hear that they were pretty much extinct in this day and age.

Closing his eyes, he ducked down and pressed a quick peck to San’s lips, making sure to put enough pressure into the kiss so that there wouldn’t be any magical misunderstandings. San’s lips were delightfully soft, Hongjoong noticed dimly as he drew back, every part of him tingling with a violent mix of apprehension and expectation as San immediately began to shift, brows furrowing and eyes moving restlessly beneath his closed lids.

“San,” Hongjoong said carefully, and San’s eyes snapped open, fluttering and dazed as they wandered across the room before settling slowly on Hongjoong. Recognition flashed in his eyes, lighting up with the same patient contentment that had since become familiar to Hongjoong each time he looked at his resident ghost.

“Hey,” San whispered hoarsely, reaching out and slipping his hand into Hongjoong’s. “You’re warm.”

Hongjoong laughed. “I know,” he said dryly, even as he dipped further downwards, bending closer and closer to San as if he was the one under a spell. “Welcome back.”

This time, when his eyes slipped shut it wasn’t out of skittishness, and this time, if the kiss soon turned far less chaste than Hongjoong had originally intended, neither of them uttered a single word of complaint.

* * *

“You can’t really deny it. The fact that I woke up at all basically means that you kissed me with love,” San said in a sing-song voice, before breaking out into embarrassingly high-pitched giggles.

Hongjoong let out a long-suffering sigh, and he would have slapped his forehead into his palm if San hadn’t had tight hold of his right hand. “Fine, yes, you grew on me,” he admitted grudgingly, kicking at the fallen leaves strewn across the path ahead of them. Beside him, San looked as if he were in paradise, with a stick of soondae in his free hand and his face lifted against the cool breeze that was blowing annoyingly into Hongjoong’s eyes.

“Thanks for breaking the curse,” San said after a moment, in a tone of absolute seriousness as he looked over at Hongjoong. “I think this is the best day of my life. I woke up – and I have you.”

Hongjoong flushed warmly, jerking his head away as he pretended to squint off into the distance. “Yeah?” he muttered gruffly, before sighing and peering back over at San, as if daring him to laugh. “Thanks for haunting me, I guess.”

San beamed, teeth flashing in a wide grin of affection as the evening sun lit the small smattering of freckles on his neck. “You’re welcome,” he said merrily. “I intend to keep doing it for a really long time.”

Hongjoong let out another sigh. He didn’t know what exactly he had just gotten himself into, but he supposed he now had plenty of time in the future to find out.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to whoever prompted this! San's situation was, of course, very loosely based off Sleeping Beauty :")
>
>> Person A moves into a new apartment just to find that it is already occupied by someone. It takes a while to get used to living with a persistent ghost that only person A can see and that repeatedly urges him to follow him to his body.  
> A possible outcome of Person A following the ghost could be, that the body of the ghost is comatose since years and now that the ghost is reunited with the body he can come out of coma.


End file.
